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Robust SEs in GLMMs

You have to be careful when modeling auto-correlation in a binary
response.  When using a Gaussian distribution it is possible to model the
variance and correlation separately from the mean.  No so for a Bernoulli
distribution (or binomial or Poisson).  In some sense the whole purpose of
generalized linear models is to take into account that the variance of each
response is determined by its mean in these distributions.

glmmPQL is a wrapper around the lme function from the nlme package. But
lme, which provides for modelling correlations, was not intended for this
purpose.  I personally don't think it would make sense to use a correlation
function with a binary response.

A preferred approach is to incorporate Gaussian-distributed random effects
that have the desired auto-correlation pattern.
On Tue Nov 25 2014 at 11:58:08 AM Tim Meehan <tmeeha at gmail.com> wrote: